The UpTake: It's not surprising for entrepreneurs follow in the footsteps of their fathers. For Tawheed Kader, founder of ToutApp, he learned about business from the ground up and embraced his dad's lessons of entrepreneurship.

M y father is a serial entrepreneur. He immigrated to the United States in 1993 after exiting his first business, which he founded in his home country of Bangladesh. It was the first full-service, fully computerized color lab in the country. Tawfiq Kader moved to New York with his wife, my brother and me, and instead of getting a normal job, he proceeded to bootstrap yet another business—from scratch.

Fast forward 21 years to the present day: I was celebrating my 31st birthday and couldn’t help but reflect on my own entrepreneurial journey. Age tends to be a sticky subject when it comes to entrepreneurship and startups. The older you get, the more over-the-hill you feel, and the more you worry that you and your business may be one caffeine-induced, 19-year-old in a dorm room away from getting disrupted.

As I contemplated my own age, and what that meant for my own business, it was only then that I finally got around to doing the mental math of how my father started in this country. No, that couldn’t be right. Was he really 43 years old? Had he just moved across the globe, with his wife and his kids when he set up his business in New York? And with all that, he had the gumption to start a business from scratch?

All of a sudden, I felt silly for worrying about being 31. I felt silly about having any sort of fear. Relatively speaking, the most I had done was get on a Jetblue flight to go across the country. While quitting my 6-figure hedge fund job was a tough decision, being able to plug into the 500 Startups incubator, and being able to raise money from investors, although stressful, felt like a gentle cushion compared to what my father probably went through.

That’s the rule of entrepreneurship. It’s hard either way, and it always requires overcoming seemingly unsurmountable circumstance to win. And for each of us, it’s all relative, whether the issue is age, funding, ideas, customers, or profits.

Needless to say, thanks to my father’s influence, I caught the entrepreneurial bug at a very early age. There was something incredibly fascinating to me about being “in the office.” As a kid, I’d dream up every excuse possible so that I could spend summer vacations with my dad at his office rather than at home fighting with my brother over which cartoon to watch.

And so—as I went from being the kid soaking everything in, to the volunteer that handed out flyers in the street, to the intern that insisted I could design a better flyer, to the employee that helped grow the business's operations—my father taught me a tremendous amount about entrepreneurship every step of the way. Here are a few things that I learned:

Rule #1: 'Everything is negotiable'

In business and in life, one of the key lessons I learned as I observed him navigate difficult people and negotiate complicated deals was that everything is negotiable. People may come in firm on a certain rule, or a certain price, but if you can meet eye-to-eye and acknowledge that you each have something of value to offer, you can always get to a win-win solution.

Rule #2: 'Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish'

Even as a bootstrapped business, he always made sure to invest heavily and spend excessively on the things that matter. Having studied in England, he had no shortage of odd phrases that I didn’t quite understand, but this one was my favorite. It always reminded me that in business, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being “lean” in the wrong way. Know when something needs investment, and invest aggressively to grow the business.

Rule #3: 'Always maintain a positive attitude'

Through the many twists and turns and ups and downs, I was amazed then and am still amazed now at how he kept an even keel and forged ahead. Although he never said it, you could tell how he had his mantra for keeping calm and carrying on. In business, you’ll face a ton of curve balls. Stressing over it rarely accomplishes anything. Once you can learn to buckle down and grunt through the tough times, you’ll truly learn how to thrive.

I was very fortunate to have front-row seats at such an early age to see how my father grew his business. I was even luckier that he believed in me enough to give me a chance in his business. He's moved on from that first business he started when we first moved to the United States, but he remains a serial entrepreneur.

On this Father’s Day, I’m forever thankful to him for the lessons taught and the opportunities given.

Tawheed Kader is the founder and CEO of San Francisco-based ToutApp. Previously, Kader worked at Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, and Plaxo, the original social network. Follow him on Twitter, @Tawheed.

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